MLA 7th Edition

APA 6th Edition

, R. The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2008). Indigenous Languages in Canada. Retrieved March 19, 2018, from http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-people-languages/

Chicago 16th Edition

. "Indigenous Languages in Canada" In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, 1985–. Article published August 13, 2008. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-people-languages/.

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Indigenous Languages in Canada

Indigenous languages are spoken in all regions of Canada. There are around 60 distinct Indigenous languages in Canada, falling into 10 separate language families. While in many places there has been decreased transmission of languages from one generation to the next, recognition of this has led to efforts by Indigenous peoples to revitalize and sustain their languages. Canada, and North America more generally, represent a highly complex linguistic region, with a large number of languages and great linguistic diversity. Indigenous languages are spoken widely, and are official languages in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, while the Yukon recognizes the significance of the Indigenous languages of the territory. On 6 December 2016, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a plan to implement a new law to protect and preserve Indigenous languages in Canada.

Geographic Distribution

The distribution of language families, or languages with a common ancestor, is quite varied across Canada. Languages from two families, Algonquian and Iroquoian, are traditionally found east of Lake Winnipeg. In the Prairies, there are speakers of Algonquian, Siouan, and Dene (Athapaskan/Athabaskan/Athabascan and Tlingit) languages, while speakers of Dene, Inuit and Algonquian languages inhabit the Subarctic. The province of British Columbia is linguistically highly diverse, with languages of the Salishan, Tsimshian, Wakashan, Dene (Athapaskan/Athabaskan/Athabascan and Tlingit) and Algonquian families spoken there as well as the isolates Haida/Xaad Kil and Kutenai/Ktunaxa. Related languages are found in other regions.

Algonquian, Iroquoian, Dene, Siouan and Salishan languages are also spoken in the United States; and languages that are closely related to Inuit are spoken in the United States, as well as in Siberia and Greenland. The Dene languages are thought to be related to the Yeniseian languages of Siberia.

The concentration of language families in the Pacific Northwest suggests that the West is a linguistically old area and the most likely staging area for successive migrations of speakers to the south and east, a view which accords with archaeological and ethnological findings. By contrast, central and eastern Canada are dominated by the Algonquian family and particularly by two languages, Cree and Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwe. This situation suggests more recent language spreads relative to the West.

Varieties

Languages generally have many varieties, or dialects, and Indigenous languages in Canada are no exception. Many of these languages have several more or less mutually intelligible dialects, particularly when the language is distributed over a large area. For instance, Cree is considered to be a single language with eight or more variants spoken in dozens of communities and reserves from the Rockies well into Québec and Labrador; and Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwe, with a number of dialect variants, is found in many communities throughout central Canada. While not all speakers understand all varieties of a language, the varieties are identified as a single language on the basis of linguistic characteristics. If speakers of a language use that language infrequently for communication with speakers of a related variety of the language, mutual intelligibility might diminish, with dialects then coming to be recognized as different languages rather than different varieties of a single language.

Linguistic Diversity

Indigenous languages in Canada show great diversity in their structures. In terms of sounds, they range from a very small number to a large number of sounds. Cayuga (Iroquoian family) has a small number of distinct sounds, with 10 consonants and six vowels. Nishnaabemwin, a variety of Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwe, has around 18 consonants, three short vowels and four long vowels. At the other extreme, Witsuwit’en, a Dene language, has 35 consonants and six vowels. Lilloet/St’át’imcets/Lil’wat (Salishan family) has 44 consonants and eight vowels; and Oowekyala (Wakashan family) has 45 consonants, four plain vowels, three glottalized vowels and three long vowels.

Words in many of the Indigenous languages are typically complex, often expressing in a word what is contained in a sentence in languages like English and French. Such languages are often called polysynthetic, with words composed of a string of meaningful parts. Examples from Inuktitut (South Baffin variety) and Nuu-chah-nulth (Wakashan family) illustrate this. The meaningful parts (morphemes) are separated by hyphens in the words shown here, with translations of those morphemes included.

Inuktitut (South Baffin variety)

taqa-ju-mmari-alu-u-junga

fatigue-participle-genuine-a lot-be-1 person singular participle

‘I’m really tired’

Nuu-chah-nulth

ʔaapinis-ʔiic-mah.sa-ʔiiʃ-ʔaɬ

apple-consume-want to-3 person subject. indicative mood-plural

‘They want to eat apples’

Many Indigenous languages mark distinctions that are not found in languages such as English and French. For instance, Passamaquoddy-Maliseet (Algonquian) and other Algonquian languages distinguish two types of first person plural, one called inclusive and the other exclusive. The inclusive includes the speaker and the hearer (we — you and I — leave early tomorrow), while the exclusive does not include the hearer (we – my family and you are not part of my family — leave early tomorrow). Passamaquoddy-Maliseet uses the pronoun nilun for the inclusive and the pronoun kilun for the exclusive.

Algonquian languages also have two classes of nouns, called animate and inanimate. The Blackfoot examples show animate and inanimate nouns. The singular and plural suffixes that are used depend on whether the noun is animate or inanimate:

Singular animate

Plural animate

nínaa-wa

‘man’

nína-iksi

‘men’

natáyo-wa

‘lynx’

natáyo-iksi

‘lynx’ (plural)

om-wa

‘that one’ (animate)

om-iksi

‘those’ (animate)

Singular inanimate

Plural inanimate

owáa-yi

‘egg’

owá-ístsi

‘eggs’

aohkíí-yi

‘water’

aohkí-ístsi

‘waters’

om-i

‘that one’ (inanimate)

om-istsi

‘those’ (inanimate)

In Dakelh/Carrier (Dene family), the form of numerals differs depending on what is being counted. This is illustrated for the numbers two and three:

humans

times

places

abstract

generic

2

nane

nat

nadʌn

naxw

nanki

3

tane

tat

tadʌn

taxw

ta

Many languages have what are called classificatory verbs, with different verb stems depending on the nature of the object under consideration. Dene languages are well known for these. The following items are what are called verb stems in Witsuwit’en (Dene family). These forms do not represent full words:

singular object

plural object

animate (living)

-təy

-tɛz

animate (dead, comatose)

-ɬ-təy

-le

clothlike (unfolded)

-ɬ-coz

n-l-dəw

fluffy

n-l-dəw

n-l-dəw

mushy

-tlɛɣ

-ɬ-zəɣ

liquid

-ɬ-zəɣ

-ɬ-zəɣ

granular

-ʔay

-dzec

compact, abstract, food

-ʔay

-le

ropelike

-le

-le

rigid

-tan

-le

deep container

-ɬ-tan

-le

shallow container

-qay

-le, -qat

Many Indigenous languages have affixes that indicate control on the part of the agent. The following examples are from Halkomelem, a Salishan language, where the suffix -namət indicates that the action is reflexive and accidental, or not controlled.

Halkomelem

q’waqw-əθət ‘club self’

club-reflexive

q’waqw-namət ‘club self accidentally’

club-limited control reflexive

Some languages have words that indicate different degrees of proximity, as in Blackfoot (Algonquian):

amo

proximity to speaker but not to addressee

om

proximity to neither speaker nor addressee

anno

proximity to speaker and proximity or familiarity to addressee

ann

proximity or familiarity to addressee but no proximity to speaker

am

proximity and familiarity to speaker

Many languages have words that express the nature of the evidence on which a statement is based, known as evidentials. Gitksan, a Tsimshianic language, has a number of these:

direct evidence, observed by the speaker

-t

sihon-t John

‘John is doing up (processing, cleaning, smoking, canning) fish.’

indirect evidence (hearsay)

-kat

sihon-kat-t John

‘I heard that John is doing up fish.’

indirect evidence, based on knowledge of what generally happens

-ima

sihon-ima-t John

‘John might/must be doing up fish.’

The variety and diversity of Indigenous languages in Canada help to contribute to the understanding of the ways in which languages are similar and how they can differ.

Language Endangerment and Language (Re)vitalization

Many Indigenous languages in Canada are endangered because of a history of restrictive colonial policies that prohibited the speaking of these mother tongues. In an attempt to assimilate Indigenous people into Canadian society, the Indian Act and residential schools forced Indigenous people to abandon their native languages. Residential school students caught speaking these languages were punished. Even after these schools were shut down, loss of language knowledge and the fear of speaking Indigenous languages lingered, and therefore inhibited the passing of these languages from one generation to the next.

The 2011 Statistics Canada census report estimated that only Cree, Ojibwe and the Inuit languages have sufficient numbers to continue to be spoken well into the future. Additionally, only 17.2 per cent of the total Indigenous population reported being able to carry a conversation in an Indigenous language. There has been some improvement, however. Statistics Canada reported that between 1996 and 2011 those with a speaking knowledge of at least one Indigenous language increased 3 per cent, from 233,900 people to 240,815 people. Also encouraging was a 2011 survey from the Assembly of First Nations reporting about 88 per cent of First Nation schools offered Indigenous language programing, while 58 offered immersion programs. The same survey reported over 31,500 First Nations children, aged 5–14, spoke their First Nations language at home, 19 per cent more than in 2006.

In addition to the growth of language programs in communities and schools, programs for learning, teaching, documenting and revitalizing Indigenous languages have been developed by communities, colleges and universities (e.g., CILLDI at the University of Alberta; certificate, bachelor’s and master’s Indigenous language revitalization programs at the University of Victoria; the First Nations Languages Program at the University of British Columbia; and the Yukon Native Language Centre at Yukon College). More in-depth documentation of languages has been carried out in many communities. Many organizations exist to support the health of Indigenous languages, including First Voices, First Peoples’ Cultural Council and the Nunavut government. Many websites have been developed to encourage language learning; one example is the Michif Language Project.

In an effort to provide government protection of Indigenous languages in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced at a meeting of the Assembly of First Nations on 6 December 2016 that his government will introduce a law to preserve these endangered languages.

Linguists classify languages into language families, or groups of languages that have a common ancestor, representing genealogical groups. These classifications are based on shared vocabulary, sound correspondences, word structure and other features of the languages. Families are sometimes classified into larger groupings called stocks. John Wesley Powell and Edward Sapir did early classifications. Sapir was influential in grouping language families together into stocks.

Indigenous languages in Canada are generally grouped into 10 families. The families given below have been well recognized by linguists for some time. Contemporary linguists increasingly use Indigenous names for languages, and have made increasingly fine divisions into different languages.

The languages listed here are based on the classification in Ethnologue and a variety of other sources. It is important to note that sources do not agree on what is considered a language and what is a dialect, nor on names or spellings. In many places, Indigenous language names are replacing English language names. Alternative names and spellings are shown with slashes between the names; dialects are in parentheses.

Algonquian

There are many Algonquian languages in the United States as well as in Canada, with Algonquian-language communities found across both countries. Some of these languages in Canada include:

Siouan

Siouan languages are spoken in the United States as well as in Canada, including Nakoda/Stoney, Assiniboine/Nakota, Lakota (Teton) and Dakota/Sioux (Yankton, Santee).

Tsimshianic

Tsimshianic languages are found primarily in British Columbia, with some speakers in Alaska. These include Sm’algyax./Coast Tsimshian, Ski:xs/Sgüüx.s/Southern Tsimshian, Gitsenimx./Gitxsan/Gitksan and Nisga’a/Nishga/Nass.

Wakashan

Wakashan languages are found in Canada, with some speakers in the United States. These include:

There are also speakers of creole languages, or languages that arise as a result of contact between speakers of unrelated languages. Chinuk Wawa/Chinook Jargon originated as a trade language. It combines elements of Chinook, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Canadian French.

Some of the languages and dialects have very few first language speakers, and some have no known speakers. In many communities, people are working from written materials in and about the language to reclaim the language.

In addition to the genealogical groupings outlined above, languages can also bear similarities to each other due to contact between speakers of the languages. The Northwest Coast of North America has long been recognized as a linguistic area where the languages are similar in some ways, although they belong to different language families. In the Northwest Coast area of Canada, languages of the Wakashan and Salishan families, Tlingit, and Haida share many characteristics, together with languages of a number of languages of the United States (Chimakuan languages, Lower Chinook, Alsea, Siuslaw, Takelma, Kalapuya, Coos, some Pacific Coast Athabaskan) even though they are not genealogically related. For instance, languages of this area have large numbers of consonants and many of them have tones (a difference in meaning can be marked by differences in the pitch of a word; for instance in the Dene language Tɬi̜cho̜ Yatiì (Dogrib), jih means ‘mitts’ and jìh means ‘fishhook’ – the only difference between them is that in ‘fishhook’ the pitch is lower (marked with a grave accent) ‘than it is in ‘mitts’). Many exhibit reduplication (St’át’imcets/Lillooet: s-qwəm ‘mountain’, s-qwə́m-qwəm ‘mountain range’; cíʔiʕ’w ‘to bleed’, cíʔ-cʔiʕ’w ‘to bleed all over’).